


The Pufferfish Dilemma

by Anonymous



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Akin To A Character Study, Choi Yeonjun Is Bad At Feelings, Getting to Know Each Other, Oblivious Choi Yeonjun, Pufferfish as a metaphor for relationships, Soft Choi Soobin, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, past toxic relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27946679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "The toxins in pufferfish are also pheromones," Taehyun explains delicately, one hand holding up the near-illegible page of his notebook, "Which means that between themselves, they tend look for the most toxic partner to mate with."Yeonjun not-quite-laughs, a little more similar to a dry heave than anything, and says:"We have something in common, then."Or: Yeonjun just can't seem to find the right person. Of course, he never considers waiting for them to come to him, instead.
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Huening Kai/Kang Taehyun, Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 9
Kudos: 56
Collections: Anonymous





	The Pufferfish Dilemma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo ! :)

"You wanted me," Munhee says, even as Yeonjun throws his stupid guitar at his torso. He barely catches it, dropping the rest of his things-a dry toothbrush Yeonjun bought him a month ago, a change of clothes, a cellphone and its charger-on the floor of the open corridor outside Yeonjun's apartment.

Yeonjun remembers all the times he asked if Munhee would play for him one day. The smiles he'd mistaken as shy, the redirections of _I'm still learning the song I'll play for you,_ or _My hands hurt from practicing too much_. From the way Munhee holds it, an uncomfortable bear hug that twists the strings around his buttons, Yeonjun doesn't think he's ever played a day in his life.

"You still want me, Yeonjunnie, I can feel it. You're-"

"I'm _what_?" Yeonjun spits, though it comes out as a mix of a sigh and a yawn. He's tired. Has been since before the notification from the camera in his apartment, though missing the stop on the bus because of it didn't help.

He doubts he's going to be able to rest sleeping on the couch, but there's no way he's sleeping in that bed right now. Not until he sterilizes the bedsheets, at least. The stranger had done him the courtesy of not leaving any...visible traces as they left earlier. The bare minimum, but Yeonjun can respect the difficulty.

Munhee is still talking, apparently, "-too busy. If you'd quit like I told you this wouldn't have happened!"

Yeonjun stares blankly at him, muscles tight and stringy. _This_ , Munhee says, as if the insistent requests that Yeonjun skip work to do things for him were a service. Like the time he'd tried to convince him Beomgyu-- _Beomgyu_ \--was trying to 'get in his pants' and demanded he resign was a _favor_. Yeonjun can't believe he even defended him, then, when Taehyun punched him in the face.

He starts closing the door, hissing, "Just leave."

Munhee gapes, giving Yeonjun a clear view of the beginnings of a cavity forming on his molar. Nothing too deep, yet, just a black spot. He never had listened when Yeonjun asked him to brush his teeth, had he? The thought makes him shudder, encouraging him to pull harder on the door handle.

_Six months and three weeks. A new record._

"Wait!" 

Yeonjun doesn't, but Munhee sticks his foot between the gap that's left. Yeonjun has a few seconds of satisfaction where he keeps pulling, crushing the limb, before stopping and surreptitiously trying to push it out. "What do you want, _dude."_

"I..." For a split second, Yeonjun thinks he's going to get an apology. It won't change his mind, but the way Munhee's mouth flaps open and closed as he tries to push his face together into an indiscernible expression is amusing. Yeonjun thinks he might be going for _aegyo,_ even.

Of course, even that is too much: "You're not gonna find anyone with a dick like mi-"

Wordlessly, Yeonjun kicks Munhee's foot out the door, slamming it shut and deadbolting it as soon as he hears it click. 

_Asshole_ , Yeonjun thinks, a bitter taste flooding the back of his tongue. He sags against the frame as he feels a series of frantic, loud thumps against it, Munhee's muffled voice ringing out through the wall. The empty sensation that seeps from his stomach towards the rest of his body is nothing he hasn't felt before, melding with his exhaustion into a void of thoughts, too. 

Despite himself, Yeonjun feels a familiar prickle behind his eyes. He lets himself slide down the door along with the first of the tears, pressing his back against the rhythmic, harsh tapping of Munhee's outburst and feeling like it's almost knocking his bones out of place. Inch by inch.

Yeonjun doesn't leave even after it stops. 

* * *

He wakes up to his alarm ringing-Eleven A.M, his mind supplies-in his pocket with a crick in his neck and makeup crusting uncomfortably around his eyes. His mascara has solidified into a glob on his tear ducts, itching with every blink as he tries to clear the stickiness under his lids. Yeonjun stands and cracks his spine, stomach rolling as he smacks his lips.

Yeonjun takes a quick shower with the time his alarm allows him, changing into a clean set of clothes and scrunching his nose at the rumpled bed. Without being put to charge, his phone is nearly dead, so Yeonjun packs his fastest charger into his bag before hesitantly leaving at least five minutes earlier than he usually does.

There's nothing outside his apartment when he opens the door, and Yeonjun can't tell if the sigh that pushes out of him is relieved or the opposite. 

He's not particularly hungry despite having not eaten dinner, but he refuses to go into work before eating. What kind of teacher risks passing out in his own class? Not him, certainly.

He's not quite masochistic enough to make himself _cook_ , though, so he stops by a bakery that he tracks down on the way. Yeonjun's pretty sure the _halmeonis_ around the road give him the stink eye as he eats on the go, ripping a sandwich up between his teeth. He finishes just in time to scrunch up the wrapper outside the studio, holding it in one hand as he fishes for the keys in his bag pocket. 

Unlocking the studio takes him a few awkward seconds in which someone passes by walking their dog, costing him even more time as he tilts his head and says a quick hello while fruitlessly trying to push the key into the lock. Eventually the universe has to let something go his way, because he manages to get the door open without having to call the locksmith (if Yeonjun got a penny for every time he'd had to do that this year...) and successfully throws away his trash in the can by the door.

The lobby isn't quite homely--it's a professional establishment, which means Yeonjun invested in some slightly-uncomfortable armchairs that go well with a concrete floor, and a desk to match. They still haven't gotten around to hiring someone for the front desk (though Taehyun had offered, before Yeonjun gently pointed out that that meant looking at the _door_ , not into the classroom), so Yeonjun is the one who sits down and boots up the computer this time.

There's only four classes before his and Beomgyu's turns end for the day, having two fresh-faced teachers since last week. Jimin had come back from France and made good on a promise from nearly three years before, and the day after had towed in a friend (later introduced as Jeongguk) who he claimed 'volunteered' for an interview. Yeonjun had been so ecstatic he'd impulse-bought a security camera set in preparation for more free time, and, well-

His mood sours just as the bell rings, Beomgyu skipping in through the door with one of his dark coffees in one hand and his bag and a muffin in the other. There's no real greeting more than a nod of acknowledgement of each other as Beomgyu sits down on the small side stool to look through the schedule himself, sipping on his coffee and scrunching his face as Yeonjun stealthily avoids him by going into the main dance room to prepare.

It's nearly two by the time the first few students start to filter in, old faces that just grunt before throwing their cards on the desk and making a beeline for the shoe racks versus new ones that look around for _someone_ before Beomgyu helpfully waves them in his direction. Yeonjun isn't exactly paying attention, looking at himself in the mirror and breathing in deeply, which brings the smell of skin and a chilly air into his nostrils. Beomgyu must have turned on the air conditioner--Yeonjun would have to thank him for that. 

His face no longer has the traces of makeup from yesterday. He hadn't bothered putting on some this morning, content with the fact his skin hadn't immediately imploded on itself when he slept in his foundation, and he doesn't find that he regrets it when the scar on his eyelid catches his own attention. It's small; not exactly noticeable by any means, but it's large enough that he usually dabs a bit of useless concealer on it before hoping his eyebrows are thick enough to hide it. His mother mentioned once it made him look rugged. Yeonjun thinks it makes him look stupid.

The class starts at two fifteen, after a short preface letting everyone warm up and stretch that Yeonjun walks them through. It comes easy, to let the mind-numbing parts of his job take over. Then comes the actual teaching, which goes...interestingly enough. He doesn't make any big mistakes, nothing enough to clue in anyone that doesn't know him that he's distracted, but enough that Beomgyu playfully corrects him.

Beomgyu notices something about him, because of course he does. Yeonjun has no doubt Taehyun would too, if he worked at the studio. Figures the both of them would share the same creepy power to know what he's feeling. Somehow, Yeonjun thinks, Taehyun would be preferable. He doesn't ask about things he already knows the answer to, only reacts to the consequences, while Beomgyu just can't seem to _stop_.

"Hyung-ah?" Beomgyu starts, during the ten minute period between the first lesson of the day and the next. Yeonjun makes the mistake of looking at him, of making eye contact and seeing the question there among the sadness _for_ him. Instantly, Yeonjun feels guilty for reproaching Beomgyu at all. _Fucking Pisces_. 

"Yeah," Yeonjun says, a confirmation more than anything else. He turns, looking at Beomgyu through the fogged-up mirror rather than head on. Behind them, Yeonjun can see an abandoned pair of shoes in one of the boxes. Someone's walking around barefoot, it seems.

"You know he wasn't-" Beomgyu tries, thumb snapping over his index finger, "What did he do?"

Yeonjun takes a deep breath, leaning against the shoe rack, "Cheated. He was bringing them to my apartment, since it's bigger. Didn't realize I put cameras in last week."

"Oh," Beomgyu leans closer, side almost boiling against Yeonjun's arm. He's sweaty; they both are, anyway, so Yeonjun just hooks his arm around Beomgyu's shoulders and pulls him closer before Beomgyu burrows in anyway. "Do you know how long?"

"No," Yeonjun answers, because he doesn't. The most he can do is guess at how long he was ignoring the signs for. "It doesn't matter, anyway."

"That's true," Beomgyu muses, head soundly on his shoulder, "Jus' wanted to know how long Tyun-ah should beat him for."

Yeonjun laughs, a bit of a cough as the sweat cools on him, "Taehyunnie won't do that."

"You underestimate him. If I asked him to, he definitely would."

Now, that's another beast entirely, but Yeonjun will let Beomgyu reason that out on his own time, "Sure, Gyu, sure."

The rest of the time is used to clean up and get ready for the next class. Yeonjun feels a little...refreshed, somehow. Not _good,_ but he'll get there. It's easier to think he will now, and he thinks that's the point. 

Maybe it _is_ better to see Beomgyu first. ' _I told you so_ ' doesn't happen when he's around, at least. Yeonjun ignores this repetitive epiphany of hisin favor of focusing on working--on dancing. If there's anything that can bring him back to one hundred percent, it's moving without the opportunity to stop.

By the time Jimin and Jeongguk arrive, Beomgyu has already roped him in to get ice cream after fetching Taehyun from his classes, and made him promise to give him a key to his apartment, as well as the code to the cameras. Yeonjun follows Beomgyu out of the studio in a daze, setting down the keys mechanically on the desk after he convinced Jimin to close down as well as open the place up because Yeonjun was 'indisposed'. He hadn't revealed _why_ , which makes Yeonjun simultaneously annoyed and so grateful he would buy forty thirty-dollar grapes for him.

When they meet up with Taehyun, it doesn't surprise Yeonjun that he takes one look at him and declares his intent to slay Munhee, much to Beomgyu's delight.

"Tyun-ah!" he says, clapping with unrestrained, dangerous glee. Yeonjun sighs.

"Yeah," Yeonjun fixes Taehyun with a stern stare, "Don't do it, though. It's not worth it."

"And why not?" Taehyun protests, crossing his arms and huffing while puffing his cheeks. _For someone who hates aegyo, you sure do have a lot of it naturally_.

"Because I say so," is all Yeonjun can come up with, but he's going to milk it for all it's worth, "I just want to put it behind me. Forget about it, you know?"

Taehyun looks at him with an inscrutable expression, eyes calculating, "If you keep doing that people are gonna think they can take advantage of you."

"Let them think that," Yeonjun gives a flat smile, "I don't care."

Beomgyu, for his part, lets a long, high whine escape him, "Stop it! You're going to ruin my ice cream before I even buy it."

"Sorry," Taehyun says, though he doesn't look all that apologetic scanning Yeonjun up and down before clicking his tongue and hitching his bag higher on his shoulder, "Let's go; I need to review my notes from today."

 _And that's that_ , Yeonjun thinks humorlessly. It wasn't always like this; There'd been a time, before Taehyun knew of his relationships, when he simply thought Yeonjun was just really bad at keeping one, that he'd just offer words of comfort. Yeonjun himself hadn't realized the problem at that point. It was also Taehyun, later, who pointed everything out to him.

 _You think you can fix_ _them,_ is what Yeonjun remembers the most, screamed at him from across his home pool while a horrified Beomgyu held Taehyun back, both of them dripping in the stench of chlorine. _You're playing god and it's breaking you, can't you see it_?

All because of that damn _bottle._ Well, maybe not the bottle itself, but the contents. Or maybe it was just Yeonjun, in his all-too-fallible glory.

Either way, that wasn't a good year. For any of them.

He does try to forget about it as he eats his ice cream--a sandwich bar, Beomgyu having sworn to deck him if he ordered mint chocolate now. Taehyun sits at the edge of the booth, nursing at a chocolate cone (with rainbow sprinkles, because "I need to embrace the agenda," were his words) while Beomgyu happily digs into a perfectly boring vanilla cone and squeezes in right next to Taehyun like he's trying to crush him against the wall.

Sprawled out on the table were Taehyun's class notes, fittingly undecipherable for anyone with a future in the sciences, save for the occasional picture of some marine animal that was probably accompanied by some horrific detail about its anatomy, or something. To hell if _Yeonjun_ knows; he'd never been able to read Taehyun's handwriting properly, not since he mistook one of his _bieups_ for a _pieup_ and somehow ended up with an armful of synthetic grapes instead of sidewalk decorations.

Taehyun doesn't seem like he could read his own scrawl, either, with the way he's staring a hole into his notes and mouthing what's either very rude or just plain gibberish. Yeonjun masks a smile with a bite into his his ice cream, regretting it immediately when his teeth start to sing like they're performing in the finale of a three-hour opera.

" _Agh_ ," he groans instinctively, mouth breathing something fierce in an attempt to save his dental health and the cold-induced headache. Beomgyu, sensing suffering, laughs so hard that Yeonjun sees his ice cream tremble precariously upon its waffle throne. "'On' 'augh!"

"Sorry," Beomgyu cackles, "But your face is so..."

Yeonjun breathes a few more times before swallowing, the cold ball of ice cream and sandwich cookie sliding down into his stomach. "So _what_? Are you implying my facial structure is funny?"

"You can't say it's not," Taehyun counters, clearly paying more attention to them than the diagram of a pufferfish he's looking at, "I mean, have you seen yourself? You're kind of...round."

"Round?" Yeonjun feels his nostrils widen at the indignant snort that escapes him, making his ears flush as Taehyun and Beomgyu laugh some more at him, "You guys are _awful_."

"No we're not," Taehyun pipes up helpfully, looking back down at his notes, "This, on the other hand..."

"Why do you even take physical notes?" Beomgyu ponders, sliding a finger down the paper closest to him and landing on a word that could very well be just a splash of ink, "You have a laptop."

"Unlike you, I don't fancy risking getting _all of my stuff stolen_ ," Taehyun clips back, ignoring Beomgyu's affronted " _It was one time_ ". "I move everything to my computer when I get home. That way I can sort through everything and find out what I need and what I don't."

"Clever," Yeonjun admits, pointedly looking away when Taehyun shoots him a smirk, "It's too much trouble, though, for every class. What did you even learn today?"

"Not much," Taehyun grants, eyes narrowed, but waves the notebook he's holding around, "But we did do a bit on tetrodotoxin."

Once again, Taehyun astonishes him with his way of saying big words without stuttering. Yeonjun looks him up and down a few times, wondering if he practiced that at all before just up and trying to say it properly. Maybe some people are just built to be scientists--or, in this case, marine biologists.

"Tetrodo...toxin?" Yeonjun flaps his mouth open a few times before taking an un-educated guess, "Is it the poison in the pufferfish? The-The _fugu_ one?"

Taehyun nods. Yeonjun allows himself a subtle fist pump as Beomgyu lets out a curious sort of sound when Taehyun says, "It's more than that, though."

Yeonjun raises an eyebrow as best as he can, gesturing for him to continue. Beomgyu nods enthusiastically, copying Yeonjun's motions.

The now-determined source of their entertainment sighs.

"The toxins in pufferfish are also pheromones," Taehyun explains delicately, one hand holding up the near-illegible page of his notebook, "Which means that between themselves, they tend look for the most toxic partner to mate with."

Well then. Taehyun's eyes widen microscopically as he registers what he's said, looking up at Yeonjun with a complicated expression on his face, contrasting Beomgyu's clear, frozen panic. Yeonjun feels the mood shift, palpable, and gives a kind of grimace-smile that reveals nothing.

Yeonjun not-quite-laughs, a little more similar to a dry heave than anything, and says:

"We have something in common, then."

Beomgyu, of course, protests immediately, "Hyung, that's not-"

"No, no," Yeonjun cuts him off, waving his hand around. His grimace-smile slides into something more real, more tangible, "It's fine. I know how I am."

It's not like he's lying. He _is_ this way--always has been. He finds someone he's interested in, asks them out, wastes some of his life on them ignoring red flags and making excuses, then somehow still manages to feel bad when the inevitable breakup happens. He'd once felt like he was living in a faulty washing machine, going around in a harsh circle that's supposed to make him feel clean, drowning and being beaten and spinning again and again until the counter reaches zero. And then he's back where he started, soaked to the bone, black and blue, skin raw and his whole body aching, and not any cleaner for it.

 _If_ _anything_ , Yeonjun thinks bitterly, _I'm getting dirtier._

"That's it?" Taehyun says, making him freeze. Yeonjun slides his over to meet Taehyun's, scrutinizing him. "You're just going to leave it at that?"

Yeonjun twists his mouth into a round scrunch, "I-I-Yeah?"

"Okay," Taehyun hums, leaning back, a slow, careful blink taking over his eyes. "That's who you are right now, then. Nothing to be done."

The air prickles. Yeonjun feels, distinctly, like he's stuck a hand in an open fire, and the pain of burning himself hasn't hit yet.

Beomgyu reaches a hand out to pat him on the back, but the movement is too fast. Within seconds, his ice cream hits the table, swung off of the cone and straight into a spot between two pages of notes. Yeonjun freezes as the two in front of him scramble to save the papers, Beomgyu running off to fetch a set of napkins.

"Sorry," he says, flat, but he means it. Taehyun looks at him, eyes running over his face. Then, he softens, gentle, and Yeonjun remembers how tiring it must be, to have to be the most reasonable of the three. 

"It's not me who you should apologize to," Taehyun huffs, stuffing his notes back into his messenger bag, "It wasn't your fault, anyway."

When Beomgyu comes back, Yeonjun apologizes to him. Beomgyu says it's okay, and that he can just pay for the next time they come. They'll forget, soon enough.

But Yeonjun leaves the ice cream parlor with a sensation that he's missed something important.

* * *

He comes in for a shift (a late one, because he's not about to risk his neck quite that far) at the dance studio anyway the following day, texting an unknowing Taehyun to take Beomgyu to an amusement park. That takes some convincing, of course, but dipping into his emergency distraction fund means nothing. Six months is a long time to save up, no matter how much Munhee had tried to convince him to let him handle 'their money', as he called it.

Jimin, the saint that he is, doesn't ask. Jeongguk, however, was another story entirely. Yeonjun has to craft a tale about Beomgyu being a hypochondriac, which he's definitely going to pay for later, but it leaves him sufficiently spooked that Yeonjun can step into the dance classroom and dance as much as his little heart asks him to. 

Most of the people who take this class don't know him; He rarely takes Jimin's hours, intent on creating a foundation of trust between teacher and student, even if it means he gets a few confused looks when he sits at the front of the classroom instead of amidst the students. Of course, this also means he has no idea of who's learned what, which leaves Jimin laughing at him when he tries to teach his star student (Chanhee, he claims, a total adult prodigy) the first few moves of the first dance they worked on. 

The embarrassment burns, that it does. But not in a bad way, occasionally; it's nice now, and it helps to integrate him into the class. They've only been going at it for a week and a half, if Yeonjun's keeping count right, and that's more than likely a reason as well. But there's something about looking like a total idiot that does wonders for endearing him to the others, and he's not about to complain.

Not when, just as easily, it could've alienated them instead. 

The class ends, to Yeonjun, just as quickly as it began, with Jimin telling the students where to look for their items and warning them to not leave anything behind. In a few weeks he'll only have to remind them once, for the new students, but today is not that day. More than one person walks right back into the room to fetch a forgotten trinket, or a charging phone.

Yeonjun remembers the first time he left his dance bag in a studio. When he'd gotten it back, his phone storage had been almost entirely full--stuffed with pictures of all the staffs and the rooms. It was not the last time that happened--nor was he the only one it happened _to_. Nothing else had been taken or moved, nevermind an attempt to truly open his phone.

He still has one of the pictures, he thinks. On his bathroom mirror.

"Is anyone missing a set of shoes?" he hears Jeongguk call, and looks to the site to see him holding a pair of home sneakers--The kind people usually wear to the studio, when they're doubtful of having to change shoes for it. It's a simple pair, a little beat up around the edges, but everything is perfectly clean except the strings. The slightly darkened material stands out against the white of the shoe. _An odd choice_ , Yeonjun thinks, _to clean the shoes but not the string._

Yeonjun then remembers where he's seen these before. "Leave 'em, Jeongguk-ssi. They're from-"

"- _Mine_!" a voice interrupts him, deep and frantic. Yeonjun feels a shadow fall over him, a presence making itself known standing behind him. He can almost feel warmth radiating from them, brushing against his skin.

"It's my shoes, Yeonjun- _seonsaengnim,_ " they repeat. He feels a bit of their breath hit his head, and jumps forward and away while turning around, "Ah, sorry, I know you said you prefer _ssaem_ , but I only just started-"

"Who are you," Yeonjun croaks, staring at them. They're tall; Almost worryingly so, explaining why he'd felt crowded, all of a sudden. They have a soft, blue hair color, already growing out at the roots to an extent that lets Yeonjun see almost exactly how much time has gone by since they last bleached it. Their face is...round, he thinks, though not at the jawline. Their cheeks, their nose, and their eyes, is what he means. Large ears, also round, and a quick, easy smile that exposes the top half of their teeth. Yeonjun coughs, a little dizzy. 

"I mean--Sorry, who are you?" 

The smile flashes again, pearly white, "Ah, you wouldn't remember, right? I signed up yesterday. Choi Soobin, Yeonjun- _ssaem_. And I left those sneakers here--Is it okay if I walked in my dance shoes home? The site said it was, but I'd rather ask you."

"Oh," Yeonjun says, kicking himself furiously on the inside, shaking his internal mechanisms to try to remember who this man is. Then, a flash of a memory--one of the new ones, inching next to Beomgyu as he explained the process, hunched over to be able to hear him clearly over the hubbub. Beomgyu had complained about them--him. " _Too tall_ ," he'd said, " _He can't respect me if I'm constantly looking up._ _He looks like a bit of a wimp, though_."

Yeonjun thinks, now, staring at this Choi Soobin, at his eyes watching him curiously and the way only half of his mouth slides down from the smile into a bit of a twisted, uncoscious smirk, that he's going to have to work on Beomgyu's wimp-dar.

"Yeah," he coughs, swatting himself in the chest, "Yeah, it's okay. I mean, as long as you only did it once. Did you look up how-how to care for them?"

Soobin nods, the smile falling completely into a neutral expression that still has a bit of an upturn to it. His lips are naturally tilted up, it seems, and his eyes kind by default. Jeongguk, carrying the shoes, walks up and hands them to him after clearing up that there's no question to his identity. 

Yeonjun stays quiet as Soobin thanks Jeongguk and says goodnight to the both of them, walking out of the room while ducking his head to avoid the top of the door. Jeongguk-and by extension, Jimin-berate him about his manners, not even saying goodbye, but Yeonjun can only hear the settling pounding of his heart, and feel the adrenaline start to leak from his bloodstream and turn his arms into lead.

And later, finding himself in his house with no real clue how he got there, Yeonjun thinks.

He's attracted to Soobin--Passingly, right now, a thought of "Objectively, and Subjectively, he's cute", though from the looks of things it's not going to be such for long if they meet with as much frequency. It feels ridiculous to even acknowledge it, when he's only just gotten out of a relationship. _Have some self control, Choi Yeonjun_. He's not planning on doing anything about it--hanging on to the hope that maybe, the tingling will fall away, and he'll manage to befriend him, at least. As a best case scenario.

He thinks of how he'd only just barely remembered him, and wonders how the hell he managed to miss him. If Munhee leaving really put him so out of it to not notice the hulking mass of him dancing in his studio.

And then, sardonically, lying in bed, he wonders how Soobin will ruin his life. 

_Toxin is my pheromone_ , he hums mentally. _If I like him, he can't be good_.

And on that note, Yeonjun falls asleep, and finds himself dreaming that he's on the back of a soft, white rabbit, looking down at the Earth. He remembers the shiny press of its pearly fur, and the dark gleaming of its eyes as it hopped across the sky like it was jumping on glass on top of a wide, empty chasm, with the Earth swimming down in the water among the stars and the light of the sun warming Yeonjun's face and body.

It's only later, when he wakes up, that he realizes it was the moon.


End file.
